National Debt
Who Says Main Street Isn’t Getting A Bailout?
Quit your whining and get on down to your local General Motors dealer. That’s where you’ll find your bailout money. They’ll loan it back to you–cheap!
December 30, 2008 | Read More
Frying Pan, Meet Fire
An expert in financial disasters looks at the future of the U.S. economy.
December 19, 2008 | Read More
Taking Economics Lessons From … Zimbabwe?
Don’t look now, but our economic policies are starting to look an awful lot like those of a certain African country …
December 3, 2008 | Read More
China Wins! ($585 Billion In I.O.U.’s)
It’s official. An authoritarian communist country is now our biggest, and most important, banker.
November 18, 2008 | Read More
One Paragraph, $800 Billion
Remember the bailout bill before the bailout bill? You know, the housing bailout bill? That bill was about 700 pages. 694 pages to be exact. But one tiny little passage in it, section 3083, had an enormous effect.
November 11, 2008 | Read More
Western Financial Flu Hits China
For years, we’ve been locked into a kind of parasitic pas-de-deux with China, a kind of insane codependency in which they are not only our chief supplier of consumer goods, but one of our biggest creditors as well. Now the party looks to be over. And the Chinese people are going to suffer for it, as are we.
November 7, 2008 | Read More
Who’s Really Paying For The Bailout
Ever wonder where our government is going to get the $700 (or $750 or $850) billion it needs for the bloated bailout bill? The same place is gets all of its credit these days, China.
October 17, 2008 | Read More
Is the Wall Street Bailout Really a Government Bailout?
Only a week after passing a state budget, California now says it needs $7 billion from the U.S. Treasury. The LA Times broke the story this morning when it “obtained” a letter from Governor Schwarzenegger to Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson. I’ll bet you twenty dollars against a truckload of Bear Stearns stock that Paulson leaked that letter to pressure dissident House members who are scheduled to re-vote on his $700 billion bailout. But isn’t this the ultimate Voodoo Economics? Sign a bill into law, buy up a few hundred billion in worthless bonds - ie: stick a pin in a doll and click the heels of your ruby slippers together - and suddenly, magically, funny money will start gushing onto the marketplace again.
October 3, 2008 | Read More
Reason #42: China and the Myth of Free Trade
Did you know that an authoritarian communist country is now keeping our supposedly capitalist economy afloat? No? Well, it’s true. And it’s scary as hell.
Politicians from both parties remind me of cult members sometimes, the way they mouth the mantra of “free trade” and parrot the conventional wisdom that globalization and more trade with fewer barriers is always a good thing. They treat “free trade” like it’s a religion. But like most religions, the free trade faith has an awful lot of myth in it.
Globalization has its benefits, for some at least. It makes many of our largest corporations boatloads of…
August 29, 2008 | Read More
Reason #95: The Great Shell (And Exxon) Game
Beyond the direct and indirect military costs for the Iraq War, this enormous mistake is bleeding our economy dry as well. At the outset of the invasion, oil was around $25 a barrel. Incredibly, hawks and war cheerleaders predicted military action would lower the cost of oil. We all know how well that’s worked out.
We’re already paying a almost half a trillion in interest every year for our national debt. Now, we’ll add to that billions more to service the debt we’ve incurred.
In their book The $3 Trillion War, Joseph Stiglitz and Linda J. Bilmes figure that the war has caused…
August 28, 2008 | Read More
